How many copies do they need to distribute? They could make a limited run of 25 copies every 5 years and keep their copyright while not letting many people own a copy. In addition, they could charge more than market price for the copies because they are "Super Special Limited Edition."
I suppose a way that modern pro-lifers could "put their money where their mouths are", the way the early Chrisitans did, would be to put themselves on a list of people willing to unconditionally adopt children (regardless of parentage or potential congenital defects) if women considering abortion are willing to go full-term.
I guess I'd be more willing to go along with more abortion restrictions if pro-lifers did this. It would at least show genuine care for the well being of the fetus. (Obviously, though, there should be exceptions in the case of rape, incest or threat to the mother's life.) As it stands, though, many pro-lifers seem to care very much for the "unborn baby" up to the point of birth and then don't want to be bothered with it or the new mother.
It's actually worse than uneducated kids. My wife taught at a Catholic school for girls and was present during a guest speaker whose job it was to teach the girls sex ed. Now, being a Catholic school, she expected that "abstinence only" would be taught. She was prepared for that. What she wasn't prepared for was the blatant disinformation that was given also. Things like "condoms aren't effective at all. They have tiny holes in them that let sperm and viruses through." The woman was actually teaching these girls this!
The big flaw in "abstinence only" is that teenagers tend to have two things. First of all, they have an "It Can't Happen To Me" mindset. Getting pregnant? That only happens to other people. Not to them. Secondly, they have raging hormones. Combine the two and you have someone who overemphasizes the positives of being sexually active and under-emphasizes the negatives. A teenager taught that condoms have holes or other garbage will then just decide not to use one. After all, if they're 0% effective why bother using it? They can just "pull out" or something instead. (Which, of course, is much less effective than a condom, but they weren't taught that lest the knowledge turn them sexual.)
By all means, teach kids that they should wait for someone special to have sex, but then show them how to stay safe should they decide to stop waiting.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the "flat line on the monitor" usually the heart rate? The brain's electrical signals can persist for some time afterwords. Of course, if the heart stops for too long, you can't revive the person (or they'll revive with significant brain damage). Still, someone can flat line and still have some sort of brain action going on.
Even if a person had a flat EEG and was somehow brought back with no significant problems (meaning they could still communicate), they could experience hallucinations before or after the flat EEG and attribute them to "seeing the afterlife" while dead.
The big question is when does life begin. Many religions view it as beginning from conception. The minute sperm meets egg, they say, the human's life has begun. Using this view, one can understand why they'd be against abortion, stem cell research and other things that artificially prevent the fertilized egg from being born. Other religions, and many other people, see life as starting either when the fetus is viable outside of the womb or when it is born. (Or someone else along the way.) Thus the whole "protect unborn children" thing isn't as simple as you make it out to be.
Besides, when it comes to stem cell research, the whole "killing the unborn baby" argument is moot. These are eggs left over from fertility treatments. They aren't going to be implanted and brought to term. They aren't even going to be perpetually kept frozen. They'll either be used for stem cell research or destroyed. In other words, they're doomed to "death" (as you'd call it) one way or another. At least the small cluster of cells can help save some actual lives before it is destroyed.
No, you see teaching kids how to lock their car door leads to teaching them how to unlock their car door. And once they've learned how to unlock their door, they're bound to learn how to unlock someone else's door. And that's just a short hop over to stealing a car. Clearly all knowledge leads to Bad Things (C). We must keep our kids in total ignorance*. Only then can we be a Great Country!
* Of course, ignorance is bliss. And everyone knows that happiness leads to sin, so we must keep them ignorant and punish them enough so that they're never happy at all. For their own safety, of course.
But frankly the way society is going we're getting closer and closer to the point when some man talks to kids in the park and is arrested as a direct result.
Closer and closer? We've passed that point. Now taking photos of your own fully clothed child in public is reason enough to suspect you of being a pedophile: "Dad Branded A Paedophile Over Pic Of Son"
I don't want to downplay the financial threat that the MPAA (and other copyright enforcement organizations) could pose, but they're nothing compared to the threat a child porn lawsuit would pose. I'm a married man with two kids and a respectable job. If the MPAA accuses me falsely of downloading/uploading movies, the worst that can happen is that I need to declare bankruptcy. Yes, that's bad, but my family might be able to survive it.
If, however, I'm accused falsely of possession of child porn, my reputation would be ruined with friends/family, I'd likely be fired (and nobody else would hire me), I could be forbidden from seeing my kids, my wife might even divorce me (though I'd hope she'd believe I was innocent). And that's even before I'm convicted of anything!
If the MPAA realized their mistake, I might get legal fees back. Otherwise, I'd be out my own legal fees. A hefty bill, but not something insurmountable.
If the child porn charges were dropped, I'd have still lost months of time with my kids, my job may or may not rehire me and people in my community would still think of me as "that guy that had child porn" (regardless of my acquittal). In short, my life would be in shambles and I'd have to rebuild virtually from scratch.
Yes, the MPAA/RIAA/etc can do great financial harm, but they can only dream of the "whole life" harm that a child porn charge can carry.
Is that a Phineas and Ferb reference I'm detecting. Speaking of which, Phineas and Ferb could possibly be the best "nerd/geek" cartoon on today. Two boys who pass their summer by building hugely complex structures/devices (roller coasters, time machines, spaceships, gravity nullifiers, etc). One of the boys doesn't talk much at all and the other is completely unaware of his next door neighbor's romantic advances. Of course, I... uh... only know this much because my kids love watching the show. Yeah, that's it.
Add the ability to convert Americans fat chicks into Sweden porn stars and you got yourself a deal.
Done. Wait, you didn't specify. Did you want them to be FEMALE porn stars? Oh, dear. It'll be about about six to eight weeks until we can fix that. Until then, try not to look at any fat chicks. Definitely try to ignore the Fat Chicks Convention right outside our offices. Well, ignore them as best you can while your eye implants turn them all into Swedish Porn Stars of the "wrong" gender.
This reminds me of my college days. When my father visited the campus, he'd look at all of the nice looking female students. (And by "look" I mean turn his head so quickly that I was afraid he'd get whiplash. No subtly!*) As each one passed, he'd tell me that I should walk up to her and ask her to sleep with me. My answer was if she said yes, then I definitely didn't want to sleep with her!
* Of course, this is the same guy who thought having "the talk" with me was "Hey, let's watch porn together!" There's just something Not-Right about watching porn with your dad!
Not around this time of year. Ashkenazi Jews don't eat corn or corn-derived products during Passover (along with a bunch of other things). This means that normal HFCS-laced cola is a no-no. So Coke comes out with Kosher For Passover Coke that uses Sugar. Look in your grocery store's Kosher For Passover section (usually a small aisle with Matzoh) and look for the Coke with the yellow cap. It's apparently the same recipe they sell in Mexico and supposedly tastes much better than the HFCS version. ("Supposedly" because I can't stand anything carbonated and so never drink any sodas.)
Your understanding is correct. My identity was stolen and a credit card was issued in my name and that's the information the thieves had. They even got Mother's Maiden Name wrong, tried changing the address immediately, and asked for a cash advance before the card was activated and the credit card company (*cough*Capital One*cough*) didn't think anything was wrong. The only reason I wasn't harmed as much as I could have been was because the thieves slipped up. They paid for the card to be rush-delivered and *THEN* changed the address. So Capital One rushed the card out before they changed the address and it wound up in my mailbox. Otherwise, the thieves would have gotten it, would have charged up a storm on my credit and I wouldn't have known until the debt collectors came a-knockin'.
I wouldn't call a law that allows you to protect yourself from intruders "hideously broken." Here's a true story: A few years back, my wife and I woke up at 2am to our doorbell ringing. We figured it was acting up again. (It's a wireless doorbell and had malfunctioned from time to time.) I checked out our son's window (which faces the front step) and there was a guy in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt (hood over his head) standing on our front step. I told my wife and she dialed 911 as he wandered around the back of our house. Meanwhile, I looked for something to defend ourselves with.
Now, we don't have guns in our house and would never have one (personal preference), but I did find a hammer. Armed with the hammer, I was trying to figure out where the guy had gone to when he showed back up on our front step. He banged on our front door a few times and then spotted me peaking through the window blinds.
He walked over and began banging on the window - hard. So hard, I was afraid he'd break through the window. My wife scooped up our son and took him to our bedroom while I stayed behind (hammer at the ready). I told him to go away and that we'd called the police but he kept banging and demanding that we let him in NOW!
I found myself realizing that - should he break through the window and try to get in - I would do more damage hitting him with the claw end of the hammer than with the other end. Now, I'm not a violent person, but at that moment I felt that my wife and child we being threatened and I was willing to do anything - including taking this intruder's life - to protect them. (My safety didn't even enter into the equation.)
Eventually, he wandered off again and the police arrived. They caught him and it turned out he was a college kid who was drunk out of his mind and thought he was at a friend's house. (He sobered up real quick when cornered by 3 BIG police dogs.) We didn't press charges and the police escorted him to his friend's house.
Now, if he had actually broken through, would I have hit him? Definitely. I would have still felt that my family was being threatened and I feel that I would have been well within my rights to defend them. Without the right to self defense, what would my option be? Let the guy in my house so he could potentially hurt my family and stand by watching because I don't want him suing me for hurting him while he did that?
My parents still interfere. However, their interference has evolved into "so when are you going to have another child?" To which I respond "Two kids is enough! That's all we're having!"
Of course, back in college, my father's idea of "interfering" with my sex life was walking with me on campus eyeing the women (and by eyeing I mean turning his head so fast I worried he'd get whiplash) and telling me I should walk up to them and ask them to sleep with me. My response then was "If they said yes to a random guy walking up to them asking for sex, then I sure as hell *DON'T* want to sleep with them!!!"
You're so cynical. Of course, money will go to the struggling artists. Well, first the Recording Industry will need to that their cut, of course. I mean, they are the ones doing all the work by managing the copyrights, leveraging the brand and all those other buzzword-y things. After that, they'll put the remaining money in a big trunk easily accessed by the artists. The artists merely have to look in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard". I don't see how the Recording Industry could make things any easier.
If the court argued that hard drives aren't "audio recording media" because they can hold anything, then wouldn't CDs/DVDs fall under that too? I've burned plenty of CDs and DVDs that consisted of no audio whatsoever. They contained photos, documents and other non-audio information. In fact, anything that can be stored on a hard drive can be stored on a CD or DVD (barring any space issues, of course).
I can hear the telecom companies gearing up to spin this already. They're fond of claiming that Google "steals" their bandwidth and that they need to be able to charge Google for the "privilege" of getting access to the Telecom's users. (Of course, one wonders if the telecoms would be willing to pay Google for the "privilege" of their users being able to access Google's services.) I can just see them spinning the "Google maintains such a big network that they offset bandwidth costs via peering arrangements" into "Google doesn't pay anything for their bandwidth and just steals our bandwidth! WAH! WAH! WAH!"
Maxthon, GreenBrowser and SlimBrowser are IE Front ends also. It means that 4 of the 7 (with Avant) are just IE Shells. One that is an IE/Gecko shell (Sleipnir). One that is essentially a FireFox offshoot (Flock) and K-Meleon.
Not that I have anything against Maxthon. Back when I was an IE user, it was my stepping stone to FireFox (though I didn't realize it at the time). I used it instead of IE6, the most current version of IE at the time, and was impressed by the tabbed browsing, pop-up/ad blocking and other "cool new" features while not having to completely abandon my IE-comfort-zone. Of course, I grew accustomed to having these features so going on a plain-IE PC turned into a chore. Then, one day, I decided to give FireFox a chance. It was a bit of an adjustment, but not as bad as I thought it would be. So while I wouldn't install Maxthon now, I do appreciate how it helped me transition from IE6 to FireFox.
The problem is he picked up the mouse and said "Computer: Load balance all servers."
Any second now he'll realize this isn't working and will build a new, super-efficient load-balancing operating system from scratch by typing on the keyboard at insane speeds.
He was prompted to introduce the bill because his father used salt excessively for many years, developed high blood pressure and had a heart attack.
No, no, no. Salt was only a symptom of the underlying problem. Don't you see? This person had a *heart attack*, a HEART ATTACK. Clearly we must ban hearts so as to prevent more attacks of this nature. Anyone with a heart must be kicked out of New York State!
I heard about this story a few days ago via Twitter. Apparently, the father heard something outside and took his gun with him to investigate. It turned out to be nothing so he went back to sleep, but not before putting his loaded gun on the coffee table. Wait, I think that needs more emphasis: HE PUT HIS LOADED GUN ON THE COFFEE TABLE.
The next day, the 3 year old was playing, saw the gun, thought it was a game controller and shot himself. Now I'm not a gun owner and I've never even held a gun, much less fired it, but even I know this much about gun safety:
You never leave a gun (especially a loaded gun) someplace where a child can get it!!!!
Why didn't the dad simply put it away? "He was tired" isn't a valid answer. As a parent, I've had plenty of times when I've been tired, but I don't leave weapons lying around when I am. (And having had someone prowling about my house at 2am, I can tell you you tend to get very alert, very fast.) As a parent, your child's safety and well-being is priority #1, even above your own. Losing 10 minutes of sleep while you put the gun away is nothing compared to the risk of your child discovering the loaded gun the next morning before you remember about it.
Well, this completely solves the illegal immigration problem! I mean, it's not like people will give illegal immigrants jobs if they don't have valid "job cards." After all, then they would need to pay the immigrants cash under the table or something. And, of course, these cards will be 100% forgery proof so immigrants won't be able to just get a fake ID.
Plus, there are no privacy concerns at all. I mean a card with your fingerprint and other personal information sitting right in your wallet? That's the most secure place I can think of. Nobody would ever lose their wallet or have it stolen. The card could never, ever go missing leading to identity theft. Nope. Simply impossible.
Oh and did I mention the "E-Verify" online system to check the ID card's validity. A stroke of genius! It's sure to be 100% hack-proof like all good government sites are.
Finally, there's no way this would ever be used for anything other than jobs. There will be no temptation for our completely honest politicians to extend this to travel, voting or any other use.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to clean my glasses. I think there's a smudge on the rose-colored lens.
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How many copies do they need to distribute? They could make a limited run of 25 copies every 5 years and keep their copyright while not letting many people own a copy. In addition, they could charge more than market price for the copies because they are "Super Special Limited Edition."
I guess I'd be more willing to go along with more abortion restrictions if pro-lifers did this. It would at least show genuine care for the well being of the fetus. (Obviously, though, there should be exceptions in the case of rape, incest or threat to the mother's life.) As it stands, though, many pro-lifers seem to care very much for the "unborn baby" up to the point of birth and then don't want to be bothered with it or the new mother.
It's actually worse than uneducated kids. My wife taught at a Catholic school for girls and was present during a guest speaker whose job it was to teach the girls sex ed. Now, being a Catholic school, she expected that "abstinence only" would be taught. She was prepared for that. What she wasn't prepared for was the blatant disinformation that was given also. Things like "condoms aren't effective at all. They have tiny holes in them that let sperm and viruses through." The woman was actually teaching these girls this!
The big flaw in "abstinence only" is that teenagers tend to have two things. First of all, they have an "It Can't Happen To Me" mindset. Getting pregnant? That only happens to other people. Not to them. Secondly, they have raging hormones. Combine the two and you have someone who overemphasizes the positives of being sexually active and under-emphasizes the negatives. A teenager taught that condoms have holes or other garbage will then just decide not to use one. After all, if they're 0% effective why bother using it? They can just "pull out" or something instead. (Which, of course, is much less effective than a condom, but they weren't taught that lest the knowledge turn them sexual.)
By all means, teach kids that they should wait for someone special to have sex, but then show them how to stay safe should they decide to stop waiting.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the "flat line on the monitor" usually the heart rate? The brain's electrical signals can persist for some time afterwords. Of course, if the heart stops for too long, you can't revive the person (or they'll revive with significant brain damage). Still, someone can flat line and still have some sort of brain action going on.
Even if a person had a flat EEG and was somehow brought back with no significant problems (meaning they could still communicate), they could experience hallucinations before or after the flat EEG and attribute them to "seeing the afterlife" while dead.
The big question is when does life begin. Many religions view it as beginning from conception. The minute sperm meets egg, they say, the human's life has begun. Using this view, one can understand why they'd be against abortion, stem cell research and other things that artificially prevent the fertilized egg from being born. Other religions, and many other people, see life as starting either when the fetus is viable outside of the womb or when it is born. (Or someone else along the way.) Thus the whole "protect unborn children" thing isn't as simple as you make it out to be.
Besides, when it comes to stem cell research, the whole "killing the unborn baby" argument is moot. These are eggs left over from fertility treatments. They aren't going to be implanted and brought to term. They aren't even going to be perpetually kept frozen. They'll either be used for stem cell research or destroyed. In other words, they're doomed to "death" (as you'd call it) one way or another. At least the small cluster of cells can help save some actual lives before it is destroyed.
No, you see teaching kids how to lock their car door leads to teaching them how to unlock their car door. And once they've learned how to unlock their door, they're bound to learn how to unlock someone else's door. And that's just a short hop over to stealing a car. Clearly all knowledge leads to Bad Things (C). We must keep our kids in total ignorance*. Only then can we be a Great Country!
* Of course, ignorance is bliss. And everyone knows that happiness leads to sin, so we must keep them ignorant and punish them enough so that they're never happy at all. For their own safety, of course.
Closer and closer? We've passed that point. Now taking photos of your own fully clothed child in public is reason enough to suspect you of being a pedophile: "Dad Branded A Paedophile Over Pic Of Son"
I don't want to downplay the financial threat that the MPAA (and other copyright enforcement organizations) could pose, but they're nothing compared to the threat a child porn lawsuit would pose. I'm a married man with two kids and a respectable job. If the MPAA accuses me falsely of downloading/uploading movies, the worst that can happen is that I need to declare bankruptcy. Yes, that's bad, but my family might be able to survive it.
If, however, I'm accused falsely of possession of child porn, my reputation would be ruined with friends/family, I'd likely be fired (and nobody else would hire me), I could be forbidden from seeing my kids, my wife might even divorce me (though I'd hope she'd believe I was innocent). And that's even before I'm convicted of anything!
If the MPAA realized their mistake, I might get legal fees back. Otherwise, I'd be out my own legal fees. A hefty bill, but not something insurmountable.
If the child porn charges were dropped, I'd have still lost months of time with my kids, my job may or may not rehire me and people in my community would still think of me as "that guy that had child porn" (regardless of my acquittal). In short, my life would be in shambles and I'd have to rebuild virtually from scratch.
Yes, the MPAA/RIAA/etc can do great financial harm, but they can only dream of the "whole life" harm that a child porn charge can carry.
Is that a Phineas and Ferb reference I'm detecting. Speaking of which, Phineas and Ferb could possibly be the best "nerd/geek" cartoon on today. Two boys who pass their summer by building hugely complex structures/devices (roller coasters, time machines, spaceships, gravity nullifiers, etc). One of the boys doesn't talk much at all and the other is completely unaware of his next door neighbor's romantic advances. Of course, I... uh... only know this much because my kids love watching the show. Yeah, that's it.
Done. Wait, you didn't specify. Did you want them to be FEMALE porn stars? Oh, dear. It'll be about about six to eight weeks until we can fix that. Until then, try not to look at any fat chicks. Definitely try to ignore the Fat Chicks Convention right outside our offices. Well, ignore them as best you can while your eye implants turn them all into Swedish Porn Stars of the "wrong" gender.
This reminds me of my college days. When my father visited the campus, he'd look at all of the nice looking female students. (And by "look" I mean turn his head so quickly that I was afraid he'd get whiplash. No subtly!*) As each one passed, he'd tell me that I should walk up to her and ask her to sleep with me. My answer was if she said yes, then I definitely didn't want to sleep with her!
* Of course, this is the same guy who thought having "the talk" with me was "Hey, let's watch porn together!" There's just something Not-Right about watching porn with your dad!
Not around this time of year. Ashkenazi Jews don't eat corn or corn-derived products during Passover (along with a bunch of other things). This means that normal HFCS-laced cola is a no-no. So Coke comes out with Kosher For Passover Coke that uses Sugar. Look in your grocery store's Kosher For Passover section (usually a small aisle with Matzoh) and look for the Coke with the yellow cap. It's apparently the same recipe they sell in Mexico and supposedly tastes much better than the HFCS version. ("Supposedly" because I can't stand anything carbonated and so never drink any sodas.)
Your understanding is correct. My identity was stolen and a credit card was issued in my name and that's the information the thieves had. They even got Mother's Maiden Name wrong, tried changing the address immediately, and asked for a cash advance before the card was activated and the credit card company (*cough*Capital One*cough*) didn't think anything was wrong. The only reason I wasn't harmed as much as I could have been was because the thieves slipped up. They paid for the card to be rush-delivered and *THEN* changed the address. So Capital One rushed the card out before they changed the address and it wound up in my mailbox. Otherwise, the thieves would have gotten it, would have charged up a storm on my credit and I wouldn't have known until the debt collectors came a-knockin'.
I wouldn't call a law that allows you to protect yourself from intruders "hideously broken." Here's a true story: A few years back, my wife and I woke up at 2am to our doorbell ringing. We figured it was acting up again. (It's a wireless doorbell and had malfunctioned from time to time.) I checked out our son's window (which faces the front step) and there was a guy in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt (hood over his head) standing on our front step. I told my wife and she dialed 911 as he wandered around the back of our house. Meanwhile, I looked for something to defend ourselves with.
Now, we don't have guns in our house and would never have one (personal preference), but I did find a hammer. Armed with the hammer, I was trying to figure out where the guy had gone to when he showed back up on our front step. He banged on our front door a few times and then spotted me peaking through the window blinds.
He walked over and began banging on the window - hard. So hard, I was afraid he'd break through the window. My wife scooped up our son and took him to our bedroom while I stayed behind (hammer at the ready). I told him to go away and that we'd called the police but he kept banging and demanding that we let him in NOW!
I found myself realizing that - should he break through the window and try to get in - I would do more damage hitting him with the claw end of the hammer than with the other end. Now, I'm not a violent person, but at that moment I felt that my wife and child we being threatened and I was willing to do anything - including taking this intruder's life - to protect them. (My safety didn't even enter into the equation.)
Eventually, he wandered off again and the police arrived. They caught him and it turned out he was a college kid who was drunk out of his mind and thought he was at a friend's house. (He sobered up real quick when cornered by 3 BIG police dogs.) We didn't press charges and the police escorted him to his friend's house.
Now, if he had actually broken through, would I have hit him? Definitely. I would have still felt that my family was being threatened and I feel that I would have been well within my rights to defend them. Without the right to self defense, what would my option be? Let the guy in my house so he could potentially hurt my family and stand by watching because I don't want him suing me for hurting him while he did that?
We had plenty until a certain "stuffed with fluff" Pooh Bear gained access. As he was led away, he was heard saying "Oh bother!"
My parents still interfere. However, their interference has evolved into "so when are you going to have another child?" To which I respond "Two kids is enough! That's all we're having!"
Of course, back in college, my father's idea of "interfering" with my sex life was walking with me on campus eyeing the women (and by eyeing I mean turning his head so fast I worried he'd get whiplash) and telling me I should walk up to them and ask them to sleep with me. My response then was "If they said yes to a random guy walking up to them asking for sex, then I sure as hell *DON'T* want to sleep with them!!!"
You're so cynical. Of course, money will go to the struggling artists. Well, first the Recording Industry will need to that their cut, of course. I mean, they are the ones doing all the work by managing the copyrights, leveraging the brand and all those other buzzword-y things. After that, they'll put the remaining money in a big trunk easily accessed by the artists. The artists merely have to look in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard". I don't see how the Recording Industry could make things any easier.
If the court argued that hard drives aren't "audio recording media" because they can hold anything, then wouldn't CDs/DVDs fall under that too? I've burned plenty of CDs and DVDs that consisted of no audio whatsoever. They contained photos, documents and other non-audio information. In fact, anything that can be stored on a hard drive can be stored on a CD or DVD (barring any space issues, of course).
I can hear the telecom companies gearing up to spin this already. They're fond of claiming that Google "steals" their bandwidth and that they need to be able to charge Google for the "privilege" of getting access to the Telecom's users. (Of course, one wonders if the telecoms would be willing to pay Google for the "privilege" of their users being able to access Google's services.) I can just see them spinning the "Google maintains such a big network that they offset bandwidth costs via peering arrangements" into "Google doesn't pay anything for their bandwidth and just steals our bandwidth! WAH! WAH! WAH!"
Maxthon, GreenBrowser and SlimBrowser are IE Front ends also. It means that 4 of the 7 (with Avant) are just IE Shells. One that is an IE/Gecko shell (Sleipnir). One that is essentially a FireFox offshoot (Flock) and K-Meleon.
Not that I have anything against Maxthon. Back when I was an IE user, it was my stepping stone to FireFox (though I didn't realize it at the time). I used it instead of IE6, the most current version of IE at the time, and was impressed by the tabbed browsing, pop-up/ad blocking and other "cool new" features while not having to completely abandon my IE-comfort-zone. Of course, I grew accustomed to having these features so going on a plain-IE PC turned into a chore. Then, one day, I decided to give FireFox a chance. It was a bit of an adjustment, but not as bad as I thought it would be. So while I wouldn't install Maxthon now, I do appreciate how it helped me transition from IE6 to FireFox.
Sorry, but my favorite starship captain is Ka D'Argo. I'd have said John Crichton, but technically, he's a commander, not a captain.
The problem is he picked up the mouse and said "Computer: Load balance all servers."
Any second now he'll realize this isn't working and will build a new, super-efficient load-balancing operating system from scratch by typing on the keyboard at insane speeds.
No, no, no. Salt was only a symptom of the underlying problem. Don't you see? This person had a *heart attack*, a HEART ATTACK. Clearly we must ban hearts so as to prevent more attacks of this nature. Anyone with a heart must be kicked out of New York State!
I heard about this story a few days ago via Twitter. Apparently, the father heard something outside and took his gun with him to investigate. It turned out to be nothing so he went back to sleep, but not before putting his loaded gun on the coffee table. Wait, I think that needs more emphasis: HE PUT HIS LOADED GUN ON THE COFFEE TABLE.
The next day, the 3 year old was playing, saw the gun, thought it was a game controller and shot himself. Now I'm not a gun owner and I've never even held a gun, much less fired it, but even I know this much about gun safety:
You never leave a gun (especially a loaded gun) someplace where a child can get it!!!!
Why didn't the dad simply put it away? "He was tired" isn't a valid answer. As a parent, I've had plenty of times when I've been tired, but I don't leave weapons lying around when I am. (And having had someone prowling about my house at 2am, I can tell you you tend to get very alert, very fast.) As a parent, your child's safety and well-being is priority #1, even above your own. Losing 10 minutes of sleep while you put the gun away is nothing compared to the risk of your child discovering the loaded gun the next morning before you remember about it.
Well, this completely solves the illegal immigration problem! I mean, it's not like people will give illegal immigrants jobs if they don't have valid "job cards." After all, then they would need to pay the immigrants cash under the table or something. And, of course, these cards will be 100% forgery proof so immigrants won't be able to just get a fake ID.
Plus, there are no privacy concerns at all. I mean a card with your fingerprint and other personal information sitting right in your wallet? That's the most secure place I can think of. Nobody would ever lose their wallet or have it stolen. The card could never, ever go missing leading to identity theft. Nope. Simply impossible.
Oh and did I mention the "E-Verify" online system to check the ID card's validity. A stroke of genius! It's sure to be 100% hack-proof like all good government sites are.
Finally, there's no way this would ever be used for anything other than jobs. There will be no temptation for our completely honest politicians to extend this to travel, voting or any other use.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to clean my glasses. I think there's a smudge on the rose-colored lens.